BANGALORE, March 6: The Indian multipurpose satellite INSAT-2E whose 11 transponders have been leased to the Intelsat for the first time will be put into orbit by an Ariane launcher during September/October this year. The satellite which is undergoing various tests at the Indian Space Research Organisation satellite centre here had been modified with the protection systems augmented following the failure of its predecessor INSAT-2D. S Ranagarajan, director of ISRO's Tracking Centre here told newsmen that adequate circuit breakers have been provided to ensure that the satellite's power system was not not fully corrupted even if one portion of the satellite was affected.For the first time Intelsat had leased transponders from an outside agency eleven 36 megahertz equivalent units of C-band capacity in INSAT-2E. Rangarajan said the national review committee which went into the reasons for the debacle of INSAT-2D had come out with the modifications and these have now been incorporated in INSAT-2E. He said ateam from the Intelsat organisation had visited the ISRO centre here and had been kept abreast with the developments. Fresh from the success of the launch of Indian remote sensing satellite IRS-1D from the country's spaceport at Sriharikota in September last year, the space research organisation later lost INSAT-2D on October 4 following a power bus anomaly.
